


Take Me to Church

by orphan_account



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: College AU, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 09:42:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4430495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>College AU in which Brendon comes from a strict religious family and has to hide his sexuality. Contents will include: angst, fluff, smut, and lots of adorable Beebo.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Encounters of the Dallon Kind

_"We just don't want to see you fail..."_

His parents' words rang in Brendon's ears as he walked through the morning fog, hair and face drenched from the humidity. Small town college life wasn't nearly as picture perfect as he had hoped, but it got him away from his parents. 

Failures... They always obsessed over his failures, even when he was small, and it left him with deep rooted insecurities that made living on his own hard. He'd barely been able to convince them to let him move away for college, and even then there were times when he regretted leaving home.

_What about his girlfriend? What about his younger siblings? What about his church family? What would happen to him AND them if he failed?_

Those questions and more had been whispered, screamed, and thrown at him, from the time he began his last year of high school, until the day that he packed everything he had into his friend Spencer's car for the drive north to the college. They plagued him during the empty nights, and in classes when he should have been paying attention. Simple questions from relatives blossomed into darker, worse questions about his character as a human being, about the world around him, and about life & death.

He supposed it was an anxiety disorder, but he tried to ignore that. His family would **not** be happy about it.

They were Christians, but not the kind that truly believed the Bible. They were the kind to take it and use it for themselves in order to twist and manipulate people. They thought that their religion somehow made them better than those who did not worship, and Brendon couldn't stand it. When he was younger, he hadn't known better, but then he began to grow and learn more of society. He could understand some religions, and perhaps even learn to worship in the way they did, but he didn't believe the same as his parents.

The first time he voiced his opinions was the last. He was fifteen, and his parents had found out that he had a gay friend. Brendon hadn't seen anything wrong with it, his friend was just a boy who liked boys. In a city of nearly two million, he figured there were far worse people to be friends with. But, his parents didn't see it that way, and they tried their best to make sure that he changed his mind.

In the end, when he was broken down, and crying, and tired of the yelling and all of the "wrath of god" they had threatened, he promised them what they wanted to hear. A few months after that, they introduced him to the girl who was to be his girlfriend. He'd known her and her family from church, but apparently his mother and father were concerned that he was tainted. They seemed to think contact with this one individual would turn him gay, and they couldn't be more wrong. He didn't turn into anything, but he did _discover_ a piece of himself.

He discovered that there was something about deep voices that made him shiver, something about broad shoulders and strong arms made him weak. The thought of stubble scraping across his jaw as another man worshiped his skin made him feel delirious. He was most definitely attracted to men, but he didn't _turn_ into anything. A part of him believes that if he'd been friends with that kid longer, he would have come to terms with his preferences sooner. Deep in his soul he knew that he was always like this, that this was something about himself he couldn’t change, and he felt ashamed.

He had his first encounter with a man when he was seventeen. It was with a much older gentleman, who picked him up at a coffee shop, and Brendon doesn't like to think about it much. Everything about the guy screamed "predator", but Brendon was frustrated and unsatisfied. He could fake it for Sarah, his girlfriend, and hell, he could even make **her** feel good, but he always felt empty afterwards. This man promised him everything, promised to make him feel good, and it did feel good for a while. 

Brendon enjoyed the first part, which consisted of him sitting in the man's lap, on a shitty motel bed, as they kissed. He was shy at first, unsure of how he should approach the other man, but soon he was wriggling in his lap and kissing the other messily - as any teenager would. Then the mood shifted. He remember seeing something dark, and scary in the older man's eye. Brendon was picked up and thrown back on the hotel bed, and something that should have been delightful was nothing but pain. No preparation, no preamble, and Brendon could barely walk right for weeks.

He felt dirty, and spent hours in the shower trying to wash away the memory of what the man had done.

Spencer convinced him that a change of scenery and a change of pace would help, so when it came time to apply to colleges, he slipped a brochure for a small college in Oregon, into the stack he gave his parents. They were paying, of course, so they had the last say. He walked around on eggshells, and tolerated anything they had to say to him. He hated having to fill this role, but he would play it well if it got him what he wanted. If he had to be the good little Christian boy in order to escape, he would do it.

He could have won many awards for his acting, and even though his family constantly doubted him, they allowed him to apply to the school of his choice. He chose Fine Arts as his major, another little detail he had to beg and plead for. But, slowly and surely, the pieces would fall into place. Soon he was packed up, and on his way. 

Soon he was in his best friend's filthy car, hanging out the window to flip off what was left of Las Vegas in the distance.

The road trip was perhaps the most fun part. Just two teenagers, grubby from their time on the road, dumping piles of junk food on gas station counters and fighting each other for who got to use the dingy truck stop bathroom first. Not even the heat bothered them, when the A/C in the car stopped working. They were free, for the time being, and even though it wasn't what they had pictured, it was still exhilarating. 

They were certainly a sight to see when they showed up just in time for dorm assignments, and they suspected that their dorm neighbors asked to be relocated once they got a whiff of them. Spencer and Brendon couldn't care less.

A few months had passed now, and they were well into the semester. The dorm was settled down into, classes has lost their shine and now bored him to death, and he barely saw anything of Spencer. He'd been spending most of his nights away from Brendon, and in the apartment of the girl he'd fallen head-over-heels in love with. Brendon was happy for them, certainly, but he didn't like having to be alone.

Alone meant untamed thoughts, and alone meant all of those questions would crawl into his ears and settle there, slowly chipping away at any self esteem he'd built up since gaining independence.

And so, he would get up early in the mornings, when the solitude was the worst, and walk. Today the sky was clear, but the humidity hung heavy in the air. The damn humidity was perhaps the worst thing he had to get used to. His clothes would stick to his body, his hair would take hours to dry, and on the worst days his glasses would steam up. He hated it, but he wasn't abandoning this town any time soon. There were worse things in life to deal with.

Downtown was everything he'd ever wanted from a small town. It was certainly significantly hotter than he’d like, and the coffee was incredibly expensive, but it looked like the kind of place where magical romances happened. 

He'd never asked, but he suspected Spencer had actually met this love of his life at the coffee shop down the road, because there was suddenly a lot of bags of roasted coffee beans piling up in the dorm. It amused Brendon, since he knew for a fact his friend hated coffee. What an odd little romance that must have made.

Sometimes he wished for a relationship, but then he remembered what and who he was. It was too hard for him to accept himself, and he couldn't expect someone else to accept him, so he sat back and watched as the people around him attempted to make their relationships work. He was blessed in the sense that he had plenty of time to dedicate towards actual schoolwork, but it was a curse also when the time could no longer be filled with responsibilities, and instead became filled with his anxiety.

He dwelt too much on his anxiety, he decided. He dwelt to much on a lot of things. Especially right now. He was so busy thinking about, well, **everything** , that he didn't notice the very tall man he was about to slam into.

"Oh, _**God!**_ " the taller figure yelped out, papers scattering and boxes flying as he went down. Sheet music, and boxes of strings - they were in front of the music store.

Brendon just stops, and stares down at the victim. Tall, very tall, and skinny. He appears to be nothing but limbs, and perhaps that's why he was clumsy enough to take a fall when Brendon, of all people, slammed into him. The victim regains his composure now, and stands, brushing any dirt off his neat jacket. He tosses his head back to adjust his hair - another thing he seems to carry in excess - and pushes his glasses back up onto his face, before staring at Brendon.

" _Well_? Aren't you going to _**help**_?"

Oh shit, that's right. Brendon needed to apologize. Or help. Or do something other than stand there like a dumb fool.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles, falling to his knees to start gathering the papers. His shaking hands have to grasp at each sheet at least twice before he can start putting them in a stack, and he flinches a bit when the tall man bends over to help. "Really sorry," Brendon continues on, "I wasn't paying attention to where I was going. Sometimes I do that, y'know? I'm just not used to seeing many people out this early."

"That's alright, I'm not usually out at this hour." The stranger sighs as he stretches to reach for the last piece of paper. He takes the stack Brendon has collected away from him and stands, stretching a bit, then fishes a set of keys from his pockets and steps forward to open the door to the shop. 

"Grab those boxes," he orders, from over his shoulder. The tone is so authoritative that Brendon can do nothing but obey.

He grabs the boxes and follows the other inside the store, nearly tripping over something else as he stepped inside. He'd seen the store before, but never ventured inside. In fact, he'd never gone inside any of the shops downtown, simply because everything was so expensive and he had very little money to spare for trinkets. He wished he did, especially now as he laid eyes on all the instruments before him. The fact that something as small as some of these pieces could be so gorgeous and make even more beautiful noise amazed him.

He drops the boxes onto the counter of the shop a bit more roughly than he should have, and barely registers the annoyed noise that pulls from the other man. Carefully now, so he doesn't trip and break something expensive, he makes his way around the store, exploring everything much like a curious cat would. He wants to touch it all, especially a particularly ornate guitar that catches his eye, but he's so terrified he'll break something.

"Do you have a name?"

An exasperated voice pulls him back into reality once more, and he turns to look at its source, smiling sheepishly. He steps back up to the counter and gently pushes one of the boxes he’d dropped away from the edge. "Brendon," he says, "Brendon Urie. I go to school here in town."

"I'm Dallon, Dallon Weekes. I don't go to school here in town, but I do run this little shop," he pauses to spread his arms wide, showing off the splendors of his little place of business. "And speaking of that, are you going to buy anything? Even if it's not an instrument... I'd let you pay to run me over again."

He's clearly joking, but that doesn't quite come through to Brendon, and the younger feels a shameful blush rise on his cheeks.

"Yeah, sorry about that," he whispers. He shuffles in place a bit, fidgeting with a hole in his shirt, before he works up the nerve to look the man in the eye again. "I need to go," he says, even though he really doesn't have to. It's his anxiety telling him that. It's his anxiety telling him that this complete and total stranger hates him and never wants to see him again. It's his anxiety telling him that he's worthless for messing up in a way that almost everyone else has at least once.

It's his anxiety pushing him out the door, but it's a soft hand on his shoulder that stops him.

"Are you okay?" Dallon asks, expression warm and sympathetic.

Brendon's breathing quickens and he steps away so that the others hand falls. He looks him over, mistrust and anxiety plain on his face, and then rushes out the door without explaining himself. He moves as quickly as he can through town, until he's back on campus. Once there he begins his normal schedule, and slowly moves past the first anxious encounter of the day, but he knows - he just knows it will come back to haunt him later in the evening.


	2. Just You and Your Hand Tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is pretty NSFW, just a heads up.

"I think you're a little tense, man, you should try masturbating."

Brendon flinches at Spencer's words and slaps him on the shoulder, only laughing a little bit. The two had finally met up for dinner - if a greasy burger and fries counted as dinner - and his friend had noticed almost immediately that his anxiety was worse than usual. 

It was hard to miss when Brendon was anxious, because he became jumpy and snapped at everything. He also burst into tears a lot when he was this wound up, which is why Spencer had gently steered him towards comfort food instead of healthy food. Sometimes a guy just needed some good, old fashioned junk food. And, some good, old fashioned _jerk off_.

"I just fucked up earlier today. Y'know, with the-"

"Yeah, I know," Spencer mumbled, chewing on a fry slowly. "You ran into the tall dude who runs the antique shop or whatever."

"Music shop."

"Same bullshit, more expensive price label, whatever. The point is," he pauses for a drink, "you shouldn't be fucking stressing out over some guy you're never going to see again."

"I know I shouldn't be," Brendon said quietly, casting his eyes downward.

"Ah, fuck, I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

"It's okay. Here..." Brendon dumps the rest of his fries onto Spencer's plate and stands up. "I'm gonna go wash up and head back to the dorm. You have fun with... whatever her name is."

Spencer nodded and waved him off, well aware that if he pushed the introvert too much he'd cause nothing but an breakdown in the middle of the cafeteria, and that wouldn't be good for anyone involved.

##                                                     **//////**

Brendon stayed in the shower as long as he could, which wasn't long, considering how quickly dorm showers ran out of warm water, and then returned to the sanctuary of his room. He didn't have much to do tonight, and he knew that the loneliness would creep in much faster than usual, spurred on by the lack of occupation and the incident earlier that day. And, when what little work is done, and the lights are out, he lays in bed and stares at the ceiling.

He revisits each moment of the day in his mind, first to relive it, than to criticize it. He pinpoints all the things he knows for sure he did wrong, and files them away so that he can remember to never do them again. Each time the reel of his mind rolls back to the man from this morning, a pit forms in his gut and he squirms, a hot wave of shame washing over him. That was going to stick with him and embarrass him for years.

_You should try masturbating._

He thinks of what Spencer said at dinner, and he supposed that yes, he could try it. Usually it wasn't worth it, though, because everything he got off on left him feeling ashamed, especially since he had a girlfriend back home.

Shit.

He was supposed to call Sarah today.

He was supposed to love her as more than a friend and be attracted to her too, but he couldn't bring himself to do that, either.

It wasn't that he thought girls were ugly. No, girls were rather pretty. Everyone was capable of aesthetic beauty. Brendon just didn't find any lingering pleasure with women. He desired something else.

He ran a hand underneath his shirt and over his stomach, slowly rolling his hips in bed. The spark under his skin was awake, and travelling down into his belly to light the fire. One of his fingernails caught at his nipple as he moved his hand higher on his chest, and the little bolt of arousal from this simple action made him gasp. He was, quite literally, feeling himself up, but it made the experience so much more pleasurable.

He wasn't past the point of no return, yet. He could still roll over and go to sleep. He could refuse to indulge in his guilty pleasure and forget it ever happened.

But, then his brain had another idea. 

Hands, soft hands running all over his body. Squeezing at his hips, pulling his legs apart a bit. Light kisses to his inner thigh as he squirmed and whimpered helplessly. A warm tongue slowly licking a stripe up his cock - the man of his dreams, pleasuring him, making him feel loved and treasured. Some nights the man of his dreams was one celebrity or another, and other nights he had no face, but every night it was the same: sweet, and soft lovemaking.

He just wanted someone to be gentle with him.

" _Oh_ -" he moaned out audibly, as he reached into his pants to gently stroke his cock. He pinched at his nipple, for some reason he really enjoyed the bittersweet pain, and moaned again, turning his head a bit into the pillow so he could muffle his noises. He didn't know if his dorm neighbors were home, but he also didn't want to hear any jokes about his moaning in the morning.

So he does his best to keep quiet as he touches himself, returning to the fantasy his brain had laid before him. He imagines someone gently kissing at his ear, then his neck, and he imagines it isn't his hand that's doing all the work. He imagines he’s writhing helplessly against someone else, no doubt being shushed and soothed, and maybe he occasionally hears, " _it's okay, baby, I've got you,_ " in his ear, before he's kissed on the mouth.

Tonight his brain decides to assign a face to the fantasy, and he's shocked to find that it's the man from the music store.

The soft hand, that was on his shoulder earlier that day, was now on his cock, gradually stroking him faster, and perhaps it's just the unrelenting sexual buzz, but Brendon really likes the idea of being curled up against the taller man. The man seemed like he had to capacity to be gentle, and he was certainly attractive. He'd probably press his forehead against Brendon's, and barely break eye contact with him as he brought him closer and closer to the edge. He would only close his eyes when he would kiss the other deeply and oh, how loving he would be when he would kiss.

Brendon moaned loudly and turned his head and his body further into the bed, imagining he was moving closer to the man in his fantasy. His hips moved in time with his strokes and he was pleading with thin air, begging for more, begging for what he’d never had but wanted so desperately. It felt good, but he was aching. He needed to be held, and he needed to be kissed, and he needed someone to tell him it was okay to let go.

_It's okay baby, it's okay. You can come, I've got you. I've got you and I won't let go, now, come for me..._

"Fuck, **fuck** , **_D-Dallon_** ," he stumbled over the name and cried out a handful of curses as he came, jerking and squirming erratically in the bed.

He wiped his hand off on his pants, knowing he'd regret that in the morning, but he was too drained to move much. He took a deep, shaky breath, and curled into a fetal position, holding himself because no one else would. The euphoria was gone in a few moments, and then the withdrawal took its hold. It was twice as worse tonight, because he'd imagined himself with someone who was tantalizingly close, but someone he couldn't have. Now he was going to develop a stupid affection and longing for the man from the music shop, and it would go nowhere.

He felt stupid, and he called himself that as he started to cry. This was stupid. He was stupid. He shouldn't be fantasizing about a total stranger. He shouldn’t have said his name.

He repeated these things to himself over and over again as he cried out the stress from the day, and eventually, he fell asleep.

Tomorrow would be a new day, and a new chance to walk through town, but perhaps this time he'd try the other side of the street. He would never be able to look that man in the eye again.


End file.
